By Ben Warren
This is a bridging experiment you can run in your own life: how to have your first conversation across the political divide, and even enjoy it. Luckily for you, I have already bumbled through the hard parts, to better help you avoid them.
What Doesn’t Work
There has not been a single healthy conversation about politics in my family in living memory. That all changed this past Thanksgiving when I stopped (intentionally and unintentionally) trying to "win" the conversation. You're familiar with the negative patterns: things like "gotcha" lines, "that implies" claims, and almost any sentence that begins with "But". For example, "If Republicans really cared about small, hands-off government, they wouldn't have such a hands-on policy for my body" or "But don't you think we shouldn't regulate who can marry who?". While talking-head TV primes us all of us for political conversation steeped in these zingers, they are absolutely the wrong choice.
A conversation about politics frequently feels like a tug-of-war, but here is the first easy step to make more progress and enjoy things more: drop the rope. Don't try to win, and don't try to make the other person feel like they lost, intentionally or unintentionally. Instead, focus on building a shared context.
When I was arguing with family at Thanksgiving, we didn't get anywhere with old patterns like
- disputing conclusions, ex. "but there isn't a surge of immigrants, net migration is 0"
- analyzing character, ex. "Donald Trump just is an awful human, can't you see that?"
- smiling and nodding while self-medicating with alcohol, and silently feeling superior
What Does Work
The basic approach has three steps: establish rapport, find common problems and facts, and conclude gracefully.
Here’s Step 1 of what works: ask, sincerely and honestly, an open and solicitous question. For me, the opener was “Hey, if you wouldn’t mind sharing I would really like to know: what were your top three issues last election?” Note: this question is extremely open: it doesn’t presume a topic which may be unimportant to your conversation partner, (like “What do you think of Steve Bannon” might,) and it doesn’t presume a complete system of values your partner may not share (like “Don’t you think someone who says ‘...when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.’ shouldn’t be in the most important political office?”). This question also respects your partner’s consent by giving them an out in the “if you wouldn’t mind” clause, and can be used on literally anybody, be they a random person at a march, or a coworker, or a close relative.
This step has a hidden benefit: it is incredibly disarming. Even your ranty relatives will pause, consider, and try to answer the question in good faith. A “top three” framing forces some introspection on what is really important, and social conditioning is pushing with your purposes instead of against them: everyone reflexive becomes combative in conflict-oriented situations, and strives to collaborate in kind, earnest situations.
Step 2 follows naturally: find the problems you both care about, and improvise in the intersection of your interests. My family was very concerned with school choice, Supreme Court picks, and spending practices. Everyone is interested in making our schools as good as they can be, so that was a great place to start, but the challenge in this step is to not take the bait of conflict. Don’t focus on whether school vouchers are a good or bad idea, because that just reverts to the tug-of-war. Instead, (and this is tricky!) listen to the values your partner has and respond to those in addition to their words. My relatives were latching onto school vouchers because:
- They believed there was a problem with schools.
- They believed the problem was addressable and important.
- They had preexisting frameworks and discussions that primed them toward “choice” and vouchers.
- They thought vouchers were the best solution among the ones they had heard.
Finding common ground and developing shared beliefs is the low-stress, enjoyable way to have these discussions, and usually the problem is just as easy as this one. Everyone thinks education is important, that problems are worth addressing, and that we are not pursuing education optimally! Instead of arguing about their choice of solution, I asked more questions: what did they think was wrong with education currently? We had a really healthy discussion about per-student spending at local schools and declining performance, which developed our shared interests & rapport and wouldn’t have happened had we focused on who was right about solutions without sharing premises.
Step 3 is to draw things to a close gracefully, and can happen two different ways. If everything has been healthy, (which is usually the case,) just thank your partner and share how you feel; everyone likes to hear that you enjoyed talking to them! I have only had to deal with a partner skewing toward conflict once, and the solution was simple: when they started ranting, I was honest and kind about my feelings: “I know what I want from you: I want to understand where you are coming from. I am not sure what you want from me right now, though” was thoroughly disarming and deescalated the conversation gracefully.
What This Feels Like
Conflict is exhausting, and that exhaustion is part of why these conversations have become unappealing for most people. But when you stop trying to pull for your side as hard as you can, these conversations can become liberating; an opportunity to know someone better, to share perspectives and information, and to be known better yourself.
One conversation won’t persuade someone into to your views, and persuasion is a bad model to use in bridging political divides; understanding and collaboration are the pillars across the political divide. The next time you see someone wearing a MAGA hat, or sense your uncle winding up about What Is Wrong With America, try these steps and see what happens. If you are anything like me, you’ll likely find gratification in starting to bridge our politics.
